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Monday, February 25, 2013

Happy Monday! I'm linking up with Fun in 1st Grade for Inspiration Monday. I use inspirational quotes to get me started on Mondays. I use them for most anything if I need a quick pick me up. You can check out My Favorite Quotes board on Pinterest for more quotes. This is one of my favorites.

Friday, February 22, 2013

Believe it or not, I only had two teaching days this week! School was closed today due to freezing rain, we had a day of A.L.I.C.E training, and of course President's Day. I'll be stretching my Five for Friday, but here it goes....

1. We had a bombshell dropped on us during a meeting this week about Ohio's Third Grade Guarantee. According to the new law, we don't have enough teachers in our district qualified to teach third grade. This prompted me to write (my way of processing). I wrote a poem titled, "A Teacher's Heart". You can click on the title to read.

2. My children are practicing fact fluency on a site I found through another blogger called Xtra Math. It is free and tracks the progress of the children in mastering their facts. I get weekly email updates on their progress and even got five certificates of mastery to pass out this week. Check it out for yourself. :)

3. All my read alouds for the rest of the month are in honor of Black History Month. The children especially liked the Harriet Tubman read aloud. It sparked a lot of discussion.

Monday, February 18, 2013

I'm taking full advantage of having today off and linking up with Primary Possibilities and Manic Monday Freebies.

1. School-----I am very blessed to be teaching in the community that I went to school in. I teach in a brand new building and love it. Our school district was named an Ohio District of Character due to our strong character education program.

2. Sport------You can see from my March Madness post that I'm a huge basketball fan. I involve my children in my favorite sport through my March Madness Reading Contest. You can read more about it by clicking here.
My freebie that I'm sharing are the basketball templates I created to record reading minutes.

3. Smile---I found something on Pinterest that made me smile. This is how I feel after my ELA Common Core Curriculum Mapping meetings.

Sunday, February 17, 2013

I'm a three point lovin, defense yelling, shot block cheerin', slam dunk delighted basketball fan! I love some basketball! So, I decided to host my first linky party around the March Madness theme.

Two years ago I started The 3Booth March Madness Reading Contest in my classroom. I divide the kids into two teams myself so they are balanced. The children choose their team names and set reading goals based on minutes read at home. They record their minutes read at home on basketballs and turn them into their team baskets hanging in the room. Once a week a update the totals on a graph. The first team to reach their goal gets to each lunch in the room with an ice cream treat. Both teams get rewarded at the end of the month with a pizza party if they reach their team goals. Our local pizza shop gives me a discount since it education related. I reward the top three readers with a signed copy of my book The Time Travel Storm and they get their picture in our local paper. 3Booth March Madness has been a huge success. I look forward to it. Click here to download the freebie basketball templates I created to record the March Madness reading minutes.

I'm excited to use my Basketball Theme Unit along with my reading contest this year. Here is a preview of 3 pages.

You are welcomed to link up to share March themed products and ideas. I just ask that you create a back link to this post.Thanks for linking up!

Saturday, February 16, 2013

I've reached 50 followers! To show my appreciation, I have reduced my products 50% for this week.Thanks to all of you for your feedback, support, and sharing of ideas. Just click the picture below for my store. I have18 freebies there. I hope all of you find something you like. Enjoy!

Friday, February 15, 2013

Whew! Time to catch my breath from a packed 4 day week. We had conferences two nights this week and our Valentine's Day party. Looking back over the week, I can't believe what we got accomplished in the classroom over four days.

1. I absolutely love Gilbert in Roses are Pink, Your Feet Really Stink. He is a character that the children can identify with. I used this as a read aloud this week. It is an excellent book to teach cause and effect. Gilbert's actions cause a whole chain of events to happen during the day of his class Valentines Exchange. I had the children make a list of cause and effect situations from the story and pick a couple to write on their cause and effect hearts. They colored the hearts when they were done.

3. I used the candy heart array from my Valentine Mini Pack as a quick assessment on the concept and found that four of my children didn't quite grasp the concept and pulled them for a reteach.

4. We had fun at the Valentine Party. My room parent had the children play a game where they needed to unwrap a foiled candy heart with mittens on, pop the candy in their mouth, and pass the mittens to the next person. The first team finished won!

5. My freebie this week is something I created to help my children self monitor their comprehension. During guided reading this week I focused on this with a small group that needs work on monitoring comprehension more frequently than others. This is also something I shared with the parents at conference time to help at home. Click below to download.

Friday, February 8, 2013

Happy Friday!! I'm linking up with Doodle Bugs, Teaching Madness, and TBA to end the week.

Here are my flashbacks and randoms from the week.......

1. We began Book Clubs this week during Reading Workshop. The kids were so excited. We have a Magic Tree House Club and an A-Z Mysteries Club.The are applying the Good Reader strategies we've been practicing all year using resources from my Monsters Reading Bundle. You can click to read the post about this.

2. Sweet! Skittles were the topic of our graphs The kids collected data on colors of Skittles and graphed the results by creating a bar graph.

3. Suffix Hunting...after being inside for recess all week due to the weather, my troops were getting restless. I armed the troops with notebooks and pencils and set out into the hallway on a suffix hunt. We made a class chart after the hunt listing all the words and underlined the base words. In groups, they came up with meanings for each word using the affix as a clue.

4. Marvelous Math pinning...I've created a board on Pinterest for math resources and ideas. Fellow educators and pinners contribute to the board. If you need some ideas for math check it out. I've already used many ideas from it. :)

5. My little paleontologists put together dinosaur skeletons and named their fossils. I found the printable skeleton at Sparkle Box. We then made a word bank of science terms we learned from our fossil readings in science. The children wrote newspaper articles about their "discoveries" using words from the word bank. My freebie is the organizer, checklist, and article template for this writing. Click below to download. I am so pleased with how well they wrote their articles. One of my students included more nonfiction text features than I required. :)